Pawnstorm Digital Press

I’ve been without power for most of the past six days, which has led to a predictable drop in productivity. I’m happy to report that the power is back on, and I hope to have the Broken Shores story that I’m working on finished by the end of the week. In other news, I’ve been thinking about the story that I wrote to submit to Machine of Death for Volume 2. They didn’t buy it, and although they mentioned something about possibly buying more of the submissions, they haven’t mentioned anything about it since. Since I’m the impatient type, I’ll probably post it here sometime soon, so keep an eye out for that.

I've been without power for most of the past six days, which has led to a predictable drop in productivity. I'm happy to report that the power is back on, and I hope to have the Broken Shores story that I'm working on finished by the end of the week. In other news, I've ...

Last fall, due to spam, I took the ShoStoWriMo forum offline, with the intention of bringing it back in 2012. I had been putting it off (probably until March), but I’ve started to see people trying to go to the nonexistent forum to register. Since I lost a lot in the Hostocalypse I’ve had to restart from scratch, but the bones are up. Currently, registration is by admin approval only, but if you really want to get in, register an account and put a comment here (by clicking on the post title, this is on my to-fix list, I assure you).

In any case, I give you the 2012 Short Story Writing Month forum!

Last fall, due to spam, I took the ShoStoWriMo forum offline, with the intention of bringing it back in 2012. I had been putting it off (probably until March), but I've started to see people trying to go to the nonexistent forum to register. Since I lost a lot in the Hostocalypse I've had ...

In December, I decided to take part of the Reddit Fantasy Writers December Writing Challenge (which was to start a short story with the line: “I guarantee you won’t find the same quality for a cheaper price,” the merchant insisted.). All was going well, I had an idea, and finished a first draft by the sixteenth, but then forgot all about it and missed the deadline for submission. In any case, I went ahead and revised it this morning and have posted it. It’s only about 1250 words, so it shouldn’t take long to read. Enjoy!

In other news, I hope to make some more progress on restoring this site tomorrow and Wednesday, focusing on redoing the sidebar and fixing the RSS links (I try to run everything through my feedburner feed). In addition, I plan on fixing the Soapbox page so that it once again has the complete story.

In December, I decided to take part of the Reddit Fantasy Writers December Writing Challenge (which was to start a short story with the line: "I guarantee you won't find the same quality for a cheaper price," the merchant insisted.). All was going well, I had an idea, and finished a first draft by the ...

Things are starting to get back to normal. I’ve managed to migrate over to my new account at FatCow Hosting, and things are looking pretty good. I still have a few things to take care of, like fixing the sidebar and updating the Soapbox page, but I hope to do those tomorrow. As for writing, I haven’t done any in a couple of weeks, but I plan on getting back on track in that department tomorrow, as well, and will probably have some new fiction this month. My projects for the month are: revising Caldera, finishing the rough draft of the new Broken Shores story, and starting work on a story idea that my cousin gave me about intelligent food hamsters. I probably won’t get back to Soapbox until early next month, however, so apologies in advance for that.

Things are starting to get back to normal. I've managed to migrate over to my new account at FatCow Hosting, and things are looking pretty good. I still have a few things to take care of, like fixing the sidebar and updating the Soapbox page, but I hope to do those tomorrow. As for ...

. . . but should be back sometime tonight. What happened is that my old hosting provider went down and I had to switch, which takes some time. I did back up a few weeks ago, and have the missing stuff in hard digital copies. Even after I restore the site, it might not be until sometime next week that I get everything else back. Thanks for your patience.

Broken Shores is in a slightly more advanced state of repair, so you can read stuff over there, although things like images aren’t up yet.

. . . but should be back sometime tonight. What happened is that my old hosting provider went down and I had to switch, which takes some time. I did back up a few weeks ago, and have the missing stuff in hard digital copies. Even after I restore the site, it might not ...

Due to the upcoming holiday, I’m going to take a few weeks off from writing Soapbox. Don’t worry, I won’t be slacking off completely. During that time, I plan on doing a final revision to Caldera, writing a piece of flash for the /r/fantasywriters December challenge, and writing a piece of flash for Broken Shores. I also plan on the occasional blog post. In any case, happy Snowflake Day!

Due to the upcoming holiday, I’m going to take a few weeks off from writing Soapbox. Don’t worry, I won’t be slacking off completely. During that time, I plan on doing a final revision to Caldera, writing a piece of flash for the /r/fantasywriters December challenge, and writing a piece of flash for Broken Shores. I also ...

Here’s part 19 of Soapbox (unedited, as usual). If you are new here and want to know what’s going on, this is a serialized story that I’m posting as I write, 250 or so words at a time added each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can skip back to part one, or read the entire thing as one page. Enjoy.

No one had an answer, and for the next fifteen minutes the conversation skittered from topic to topic as they made their way to the Bazaar. When they arrived they found the entire alleyway cleared. Or at least that was how it looked to Ethan. It had been less than an hour since they had received the alert, the alleyway was almost certainly under residual surveillance.

“So what now?” Ethan asked.

“In about five hours, it will be rush hour and we can make it to Alternate C,” Bridget said.

“Until then?” Ethan asked.

“We need to lie low, you can come over to our place and get cleaned up, or you can head to your own place and we can meet up later,” David said.

“If it’s not too much trouble, I’ll come with you,” Ethan said.

The apartment was not what Ethan expected. Apparently, when David had said ‘our’ he had meant his, Jess’s, and Bridget’s. The apartment had two bedrooms and a common area with a semi-detached kitchen. Other than that, it looked remarkably like Ethan’s apartment: there was a large couch that faced a TV on the wall, bookshelves loaded with books and other random items, and several tablets all vying for outlet space.

“Give me a minute to find you a towel, then the shower’s yours,” David said.

The shower felt incredibly good, and it was only the knowledge that three other people were waiting on him to finish that got Ethan out in a reasonably short time. When he emerged, the common area was noticeably cleaner, although it hadn’t been very dirty to start with.

“How–” Ethan began.

Bridget cut him off. “Jess is a graphic designer. Between that and unemployment we make it work.”

Here’s part 19 of Soapbox (unedited, as usual). If you are new here and want to know what’s going on, this is a serialized story that I’m posting as I write, 250 or so words at a time added each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can skip back to part one, or read the entire thing as ...

Here’s part 18 of Soapbox (unedited, as usual). If you are new here and want to know what’s going on, this is a serialized story that I’m posting as I write, 250 or so words at a time added each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can skip back to part one, or read the entire thing as one page. Enjoy.

“Six hours, we’re just supposed to wait this out?” Ethan asked. The idea of doing nothing seemed antithetical to everything he had experienced of the Bazaar.

“No, that message is sent out so that people don’t feel obligated to join a confrontation with security forces,” Jess said, standing up from the table. The others followed suit. “That doesn’t mean that we need to stay away completely, however, just that we need to be careful.”

“Do you want to come with?” Bridget asked.

“Yes,” Ethan said without hesitation. He wondered how much of his motivation was due to actually wanting to help and how much was because a cute woman had asked. Either way, he was going. He got up from the table, and the four of them started to leave the bar.

Before they reached the door, David told them to wait for a minute and ran back to the bar. When he returned, he said, “Sorry about that, I just wanted to warn Bill about what was going on.”

“Good idea,” Bridget said.

With that, the four of them climbed the concrete steps out onto the sidewalk, squinting under the midday sun, and started to make their way towards the Bazaar. As they walked, Ethan was torn between watching the sky for swarms of drones and telling himself that people weren’t staring at them, that it was just paranoia on his part.

“I know it’s kind of a strange question,” he said. “But what are we going to do when we get there?”

Sorry about the delay, but my head hurts like hell right now, getting the words out at all was tough. I’ll add this bit to the story page in the afternoon.

Update 1:45 – My head is feeling better and part 18 has been added to the Soapbox page.

Here’s part 18 of Soapbox (unedited, as usual). If you are new here and want to know what’s going on, this is a serialized story that I’m posting as I write, 250 or so words at a time added each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can skip back to part one, or read the entire thing as ...

Here’s part 17 of Soapbox (unedited, as usual). If you are new here and want to know what’s going on, this is a serialized story that I’m posting as I write, 250 or so words at a time added each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can skip back to part one, or read the entire thing as one page. Enjoy.

“I think–” Jess said, but cut herself off as her phone started to vibrate against the glass.

Next to it, Davids phone was doing the same, and Ethan could feel his phone going off in his pocket. A second later Bridget’s phone began ringing. Ethan didn’t know what was going on, but judging by the looks on the others’ faces, it wasn’t good. They all checked their phones, and Ethan found a notification waiting for him when he woke his up.

Drones massing in area, attack on Bazaar imminent. Remove SD card and meet at Alternate C in six hours. Everyone else was already popping out their SD cards or prying off their battery covers, Ethan did the same.

“What just happened?” he asked when he had finally gotten his battery out and removed the SD card tucked underneath.

“Before an attack comes on the Bazaar they like to scout it with drones, so when we detect them massing nearby, we assume the worst,” Bridget said.

“Will everyone be alright?” Ethan asked.

“Probably, we usually get out in time. We lose a lot of our stuff when this happens, but we can usually be up and running again in a few days,” Bridget answered.

“Sometimes they manage to change it up so that we don’t detect it in time, but not often,” David added.

Ethan didn’t need to ask what that meant. He thought back to the man speaking at the impromptu rally less than a week ago, about the drone that had silenced him. He felt a shadow of that same helplessness, but when he looked around the table, none of his new friends seemed to feel the same way. It was as though the mere presence of a plan and the knowledge that they would simply pick up and start again immunized them against defeat.

Well, I’ve finally done enough setup, now things actually start to happen.

Here’s part 17 of Soapbox (unedited, as usual). If you are new here and want to know what’s going on, this is a serialized story that I’m posting as I write, 250 or so words at a time added each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can skip back to part one, or read the entire thing as ...

I just finished the first revision of Caldera, and will soon send it out to some readers. If you want to read it and give feedback, let me know.

I just finished the first revision of Caldera, and will soon send it out to some readers. If you want to read it and give feedback, let me know.